The Military Spends 10 Times More on Boner Meds Than It Would on Trans Health Care

On the morning of Wednesday, July 26, President Donald Trump announced on Twitter his plan to reverse the Pentagon's Obama-era decision to allow transgender people to openly serve in the military. It's not clear how implementation of this policy to "not accept or allow transgender individuals to serve in any capacity in the U.S. Military" would occur; Senator John McCain, for his part, released a statement asserting that transgender folks currently in the military would be allowed to stay. McCain stated that the Department of Defense "is currently conducting a study on the medical obligations it would incur, the impact on military readiness, and related questions associated with the accession of transgender individuals who are not currently serving in uniform and wish to join the military." What is clear, though: Trump's claim that the military can't afford the "tremendous medical costs" of allowing trans people to serve is bogus.

A 2015 study in the New England Journal of Medicine estimated that gender-transition-related health care would only cost the military $5.6 million a year. A 2016 Rand Corp. study commissioned by the Department of Defense, meanwhile, estimated that transition-related care would cost between $2.4 million and $8.4 per year. And in 2015, the Military Times reported the Department of Defense spends $84 million a year on erectile dysfunction medications, including $41.6 million on Viagra alone.

These figures mean the Department of Defense spends, by a conservative estimate, 10 times as much on treating erectile dysfunction as it would spend on transition-related health care for service members who need it. And yet, Trump has seen fit to tell a whole group of people they can't serve in the military and blame it on cost — only a year after tweeting in support of the LGBTQ community. Whatever is going on here, it's clear the the current administration is lying whenever it touts its support for transgender people.